Anarchism- a first world movement?

[Red October]

i've heard alot of talk here on revleft about anarchism being primarily a first-world phenomenon that has little relevance in third world countries and hasnt accomplished very much. can anyone here help me with this?

[More Fire for the People]

Well whoever said that was a dumbass. EZLN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EZLN), especifismo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/especifismo), and Zabalaza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabalaza).

[Fawkes]

I didn't think the EZLN was anarchist.

[More Fire for the People]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 04:01 pm
I didn't think the EZLN was anarchist.
I think it has contributed to anarchist theory and practice even if as a whole the organisation doesn't label itself 'anarchist'.

[Fawkes]

Isn't it centralized?

[More Fire for the People]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 04:03 pm
Isn't it centralized?
Not all anarchist oppose centralization [anarcho-syndicalist come to mind].

[Janus]

Anarcho-syndicalists aren't supporters of centralization in the Marxist Leninist sense at least.


i've heard alot of talk here on revleft about anarchism being primarily a first-world phenomenon that has little relevance in third world countries
At the moment yes but it was not always true. It's simply because the socioeconomic conditions in most developing nations simply don't promote the anarchist ideology and even then they are usually outweighed by the Marxist Leninist orgs.

[LSD]

i've heard alot of talk here on revleft about anarchism being primarily a first-world phenomenon that has little relevance in third world countries and hasnt accomplished very much. can anyone here help me with this?

For the most part, it's true.

But that's because Anarchism is not a third world ideology; neither, by the way, is communism.

The obsession of Leninist parties with "re-crafting" Marxism to appeal to undeveloped countries is nothing short of a perversion of revolutionary communism.

Areas without industrialized infastructures are simply not capable of supporting classless socities. The only kind of "socialism" that can be implemented in these locations is top-down authoritarian "iron discipline".

Leninism may have found its "niche" in the third world; it has, after all, proven itself moderately successful at industrializing backwards countries relatvively quickly, but that has nothing to do with the question of proletarian revolution.

Unless there are workably instruments of mass control, "socialism" cannot help but turn into despotism. The Leninist "third world" paradigm is centered around "iron discipline" and "party rule" precisely because real socialism would be untenable.

At this point, however, the notion of "substituting" top-down "management" for actual workers' control has been revealed to be the utter sham it is.

The thid world today needs a strong progressive anti-imperialist movement, no doubt, but that movement needs to be realist. It needs to recognize that "communism" is simply not on the cards for Somalia or Angola or Yemen.

Classlessness simply requires a greater degree of interconnective technological infastructure than any of these countries can presently support.

That's not a "knock" against any of these countries, it's just the unfortunate state of the world.


Not all anarchist oppose centralization [anarcho-syndicalist come to mind].

Yes they do.

The thing about the third world, though, is that centralization is inevitable. The infastructure just isn't there for real democratic participatory governance.

So the real question for third world revolutionaries is what should the workers and peasants do following the siezure of power? Should they pursue "communism" out of some utopian "ideological" perversion of Marxism, or should they pursue realistic social-democratic reforms?

Leninism, obviously, advocates the former, but I think that a much more rational approach is to only fight for what's attainable and not raise false hopes of a "socialist utopia" in the fucking third world.

Kicking out the imperialists is the first step in moving the neocolonies towards communism, but it is the first of a very great many.

[Rawthentic]

LSD, now that's the kind of answer I've been looking to in response to why socialism is not possible in 3rd world, underdeveloped nations. Thanks for that.

[bcbm]

Unless there are workably instruments of mass control

What do you mean by mass control?

[rouchambeau]

I don't know if anarchism really is, for the most part, an American phenomenon. I would say that it might appear that way due to the fact that the only anarchists who are ever referenced are Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, etc.

[bcbm]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 08:32 pm
I don't know if anarchism really is, for the most part, an American phenomenon. I would say that it might appear that way due to the fact that the only anarchists who are ever referenced are Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, etc.
Uh... Bakunin and Kropotkin were Russian. Emma Goldman was a Russian Jew who immigrated to the US. <_<

[LSD]

What do you mean by mass control?

Control of society by the masses.

[grove street]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 02:13 am
LSD, now that&#39;s the kind of answer I&#39;ve been looking to in response to why socialism is not possible in 3rd world, underdeveloped nations. Thanks for that.
It was Karl Marx himself who said that it was possible for a third world undeveloped country like Russia to skip Captalism and become Socialist. Lenin bases most of his theories around this idea.

[Vargha Poralli]

Originally posted by grove street+February 09, 2007 10:55 am--> (grove street &#064; February 09, 2007 10:55 am)
Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 02:13 am
LSD, now that&#39;s the kind of answer I&#39;ve been looking to in response to why socialism is not possible in 3rd world, underdeveloped nations. Thanks for that.
It was Karl Marx himself who said that it was possible for a third world undeveloped country like Russia to skip Captalism and become Socialist. Lenin bases most of his theories around this idea.[/b]
No you are wrong. Marx gave a critic of capital and called for the need for overthrowing a system based on his critic. If you have read the Manifesto you would have understood that he called for Workers of the world to unite and do that task not workers of the First or Third worlds.


LSD, now that&#39;s the kind of answer I&#39;ve been looking to in response to why socialism is not possible in 3rd world, underdeveloped nations. Thanks for that.


Sorry both LSD and you have vulgarized the term progress and both of you are wrong.


Leon Trotsky
A backward country assimilates the material and intellectual conquests of the advanced countries. But this does not mean that it follows them slavishly, reproduces all the stages of their past. The theory of the repetition of historic cycles — Vico and his more recent followers — rests upon an observation of the orbits of old pre-capitalist cultures, and in part upon the first experiments of capitalist development. A certain repetition of cultural stages in ever new settlements was in fact bound up with the provincial and episodic character of that whole process. Capitalism means, however, an overcoming of those conditions. It prepares and in a certain sense realises the universality and permanence of man’s development. By this a repetition of the forms of development by different nations is ruled out. Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a backward country does not take things in the same order. The privilege of historic backwardness — and such a privilege exists — permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages. Savages throw away their bows and arrows for rifles all at once, without travelling the road which lay between those two weapons in the past. The European colonists in America did not begin history all over again from the beginning. The fact that Germany and the United States have now economically outstripped England was made possible by the very backwardness of their capitalist development. On the other hand, the conservative anarchy in the British coal industry — as also in the heads of MacDonald and his friends - is a paying-up for the past when England played too long the rôle of capitalist pathfinder. The development of historically backward nations leads necessarily to a peculiar combination of different stages in the historic process. Their development as a whole acquires a planless, complex, combined character.

Emphasis by me.

That is said by the most greatest revolutionary of all times Leon Trotsky in his History of the Russian Revolution Chapter 1 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-hrr/ch01.htm).


**********


IMO anyway Anarchism represents an idealist mentality of Western World workers.

[Guerrilla22]

Depending on who you adhere to, an anarchist would probaly tell you that its exactly the opposite, that Marxism is an industrialized phenomenon, because Marx believed that the revolution could only be carried out by class consious members of the working class, not peasants and the so-called lumpenproletariat. Bakunin, of course believed that the peasants and lumpenproletarait could be revolutionary. As far as

[LSD]

It was Karl Marx himself who said that it was possible for a third world undeveloped country like Russia to skip Captalism and become Socialist.


We&#39;re not talking about socialism, we&#39;re talking about communism.

Whereas it might be possible to implement "socialist" government in third world countries, that "socialism" will always be heavily centralized, bureaucratic, and top-down.

The technical infastructure simply isn&#39;t there for anything else.


That is said by the most greatest revolutionary of all times Leon Trotsky

:rolleyes:

What a brilliant rebuttal.

[The Grey Blur]

We&#39;re not talking about socialism, we&#39;re talking about communism.
Of which Socialism is the first stage...do you actually need to read the Manifesto again?


Whereas it might be possible to implement "socialist" government in third world countries, that "socialism" will always be heavily centralized, bureaucratic, and top-down.
Why? What is your scientific reasoning for such an incredible assumption.


The technical infastructure simply isn&#39;t there for anything else.
Whereas imperialist/capitalist extraction of wealth and resources will create this infrastructure... :rolleyes:



That is said by the most greatest revolutionary of all times Leon Trotsky

:rolleyes:

What a brilliant rebuttal.
That wasn&#39;t part of g.ram&#39;s rebuttal, it was his description of Leon Trotsky. An entirely legitimate description as well.

[Knight of Cydonia]

a first world movement? um...i don&#39;t think so.

i once debating my friend, he said that Anarchism is only work to a group of people and not for some nation.does it really, Anarchism is only work for some group of people,and if Anarchism work for a nation, can you guys show me which nation is using the Anarchist ideologies?

[Vargha Poralli]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 10:34 pm

That is said by the most greatest revolutionary of all times Leon Trotsky

:rolleyes:

What a brilliant rebuttal.
Ok leave my hero worshipping part and refute the point made by Trotsky which had contradicted what you have said or what hastalavictoria understood by your post.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

i&#39;ve heard alot of talk here on revleft about anarchism being primarily a first-world phenomenon that has little relevance in third world countries and hasnt accomplished very much. can anyone here help me with this?

Anarchism has never had any real relevance in the most developed or least developed nations.

Its ignores the reality of revolutionary situations, because no anarchist movement will take power.

Marxists understand, that among the working class, the most dedicated to class struggle will help the rest of the working class Take and Maintain power.

And, since (unfortunately) a world revolution would likely be spread over decades, revolutionary workers states will come under attack, both domestically and internationally.

The relative succsess of the workers state, will depend on the material conditions in which the revolution finds itself in.

In Russia, prior to the Russian Civil Workers Soviets were an instrument of power held by the masses.

Lenin, said "all power to the soviets". Iron Discipline, if ever ive seen it.... :rolleyes:

Why Russia turned out like it did, was because the october revolution of 1917 saw workers take power, then we saw the Russian Civil war, in which the working class was smashed completely, by Invading imperialist armies, and the counter-revolutionary "white" army.

So, the situation left the Bolsheviks in power, but the workers had been forced to abandon the soviets (to move to the country side) or had starved or killed in the civil war.

Material conditions forced the Soviet Union to turn into a stalinist police state.

[LSD]

We&#39;re not talking about socialism, we&#39;re talking about communism.
Of which Socialism is the first stage...do you actually need to read the Manifesto again?

That really depends on what one means by "socialism", &#39;cause the word had a number of political meanings.

Third world countries cannot "skip" capitalism. They can certainly adopt a strongly hampered form of capitalism and indeed they should. But the Leninist model of "socialism" is not merely a social-democratic republic, it&#39;s a social-democratic republic without the democratic part&#33;

Countries like Cuba, often considered the "gold standard" for "workers&#39; republics" is, for all intents and purposes, a capitalist nation. It operates on the principles of a market economy.

Granted that market is heavily regulated and the bourgeois class has been largely supplanted by the governmental bureaucracy (although not entirely), but it&#39;s still a class society.

That&#39;s not surprising, of course, Cuba just doesn&#39;t have the means to be classless now or 50 years ago. But because it&#39;s government claims to be working towards that aim, it can justify its iron grip on power.

So it doesn&#39;t allow any other political parties, so it prohibits protest, so it turns political participation into a privelege to be ordained, so it&#39;s had the same one man in power for 50 years, with no serious challengers ...ever.

What Cuba&#39;s done, economically, is nothing short of astounding, and it&#39;s a model for other third world countries to follow. But it&#39;s not "transitioning" anywhere, it&#39;s just following the regular course of industrial development, with an unusually high degree of market hampering and a particularly powerful state.

When Cuba finally moved beyond communism it won&#39;t be thanks to the "transitioning" efforts of the Cuban Communist Party or the government of the Republic, but because its workers finally rise up and establish their own direct rule.

Unfortunately, right now they have no means of doing that. So the best they can hope for is what they&#39;ve got, with a tad more republican liberalism.

And anyone who thinks that anarchism or communism is realistic right now in Cuba or any other third world state is simply deluding themselves.


Why? What is your scientific reasoning for such an incredible assumption.

Classlessness requires a greater degree of interconnective technological infastructure than any third world country can presently support.

Decentralization is only possible if there&#39;s some reliable mechanism for the masses to actually set the course of public policy. In countries in which most people don&#39;t even have telephones, let alone ready access to computer networks, that&#39;s simply not the case.

Which is why attempts at setting up "socialist" republics in undeveloped countries always result in despotism of one sort or another. Even when the "leadership" sets out initially to "represent" the masses, substitutionalism only goes so far.

It&#39;s that fatal flaw of the "vanguard" paradigm. If the entire "vanguard" could actually participate in governance, that could be one thing. But because "vanguard" is usually used as a euphemism for vanguard party, bureaucratization is inevitable.

Which is why Leninist development is often times more destructive than even capitalist. Just look at the two Koreas.


Ok leave my hero worshipping part and refute the point made by Trotsky

That "point" had nothing to do with the subject at hand.

No one is claiming that third world countries must follow the "same course" that first world countries did, just that theey must still follow some course. That they can&#39;t just leap from neocolonial capitalism to communism.

That, however it happens, technological development needs to occur.

That&#39;s not to say that they should adopt neoliberal economic policies, far from it. But and anarchist, or communist, revolution is the final step from class society to communism, and no third world country has advanced to the poin where they are capable of taking it.

And, no, "transitional" socialism isn&#39;t a solution, &#39;cause "transitional" socialism has been proven time and time again to be nothing of the kind. When a government comes to power on the auspices of "transitioning" society to some new and glorious future, all they&#39;re doing is securing their own permanence ...or trying to at least.

Which is why revolutions in the third world, and they do need to happen, have to be republican in nature. They need to be about ending imperialism and developing local economic and technical infastructure.

Appeals to "communism" are utopian at best, propaganda at worst (and its usually the worst); third world political parties which label themselves communist are only deluding themselves and conning their supporters.


Marxists understand, that among the working class, the most dedicated to class struggle will help the rest of the working class Take and Maintain power.

How can "the rest of the workinhg class" take state power? The state, by definition, is a minority of the population. It&#39;s nature is that it is composed of a small and empowered elite.

Now, that elite may claim to act "on behalf" of the general populace (or "the rest of the workinhg class"), but an institional state can never be the entire population or even a majority of it.

Again, it doesn&#39;t matter how the state justifies its existance, it doesn&#39;t even matter how its individual members are selected. Remember, George Bush was just as "democratically elected" as any Bolshevik Commissar, if not more so.

The trappings of republicanism do not proclude class antagonisms. And any group with exclusive control over economic and productive forces is a rulling economic class.

That&#39;s the whole point of materialism, CdL. Intentions largely don&#39;t matter. Even if one genuinely believes that one can act "for" the population at large, whenever power becomes personally vested, it inevitably corrupts.

It&#39;s pure superstition to imagine that the right ideology or the right "party line" can shield one against the forces of material society.

The bourgeoisie doesn&#39;t oppress us because it&#39;s "evil". On the contrary many capitalists are personally very nice people. But their social role is one of exploitation and abuse. The same is true for anyone who takes their place.

The role of the ruler is that of a monster. Whether one acts in the name of the "free market" or the "socialist cause".


Material conditions forced the Soviet Union to turn into a stalinist police state.

True enough. Unfortunately those same material conditions exist in all undeveloped third world countries.

Which is why the answer to the initial question is no, neither anarchism nor communism are achievable in the third world. Not in 1917 and not today.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Anarchism has a very big history in the third world. If you look at many of South American countries during the 1920-30&#39;s you will see that anarcho syndicalism was the most prevelant revolutionary idealogy.

China, Cuba, Russia have all had noticeable anarchist presense in their history.

[Enragé]

LSD


When Cuba finally moved beyond communism it won&#39;t be thanks to the "transitioning" efforts of the Cuban Communist Party or the government of the Republic, but because its workers finally rise up and establish their own direct rule.

Unfortunately, right now they have no means of doing that. So the best they can hope for is what they&#39;ve got, with a tad more republican liberalism.

And anyone who thinks that anarchism or communism is realistic right now in Cuba or any other third world state is simply deluding themselves.

Isnt that up to the people of cuba themselves?

Basically you&#39;re telling them "suck it up, you&#39;ll get exploited for a hundred years more"


Also, i think this whole argument about that most third world countries arent advanced enough, well i think most are. Compare the level of industrialisation of france in the late 1800&#39;s, and i think you&#39;ll find it to be of the same level of say...Mexico, or Cuba.

[The Grey Blur]

LSD you&#39;re just not worth arguing with.


Anarchism has a very big history in the third world. If you look at many of South American countries during the 1920-30&#39;s you will see that anarcho syndicalism was the most prevelant revolutionary idealogy.

China, Cuba, Russia have all had noticeable anarchist presense in their history.
Here is a constructive post on whether Anarchism has any weight in the third world. Any writings from the latter groups?

[Enragé]

technically, Spain was very much third world in the 30&#39;s (certainly to todays standards).

You can find some writings on that easily, by the Friends Of Durruti for instance.


Actually if anything anarchism has always been much more of a third world movement since it relies, historically, much more on the peasantry which echoes in the writings of anarchists like Kropotkin who when describing how a society can work without laws uses the mechanics of social control etc in a village and then says that to the russian villager today (ie late 1800&#39;s) thats still reality.

[Drippingsoul13]

does anybody know about AK Press? Thats where i have been getting most of my information about anarchism..

akpress.com

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

How can "the rest of the working class" take state power? The state, by definition, is a minority of the population. It&#39;s nature is that it is composed of a small and empowered elite.

No, a socialist state would not be a small and empowered elite.

Officials only carry out the will of the majority, and since for a revolution to have taken place, the class conscious working class will, through democracy, act in their own class interests. Suppressing the bourgeois elements that might remain and if and when they challenge the workers.

Foreign threats will also require a need for a state, precisely due to the hierarchy of the capitalists army, the hierarchy of socialist armies will need to be similar.

I understand that the state and hierarchy is a totally oppose to anarchism, but, ideology is only really useful to us when we have the power to create a new society.

When it comes to defending a revolution, we need to be pragmatic with our ideology.

Every anarchist movement i know about, has ultimately realized this, except they put themselves in the awkward position of being anti-statist - losing power - running in a bourgeois election for president.

So, the state is a necessary evil, but with a large working class, it would be much better than any state we have seen before.




True enough. Unfortunately those same material conditions exist in all undeveloped third world countries.

Which is why the answer to the initial question is no, neither anarchism nor communism are achievable in the third world. Not in 1917 and not today.

LOL&#33; wtf?

thats not at all true.

The Russian working class was very small and young in 1900. Less than 5% of the population. Most of that died or fled the cities during the civil war.

The material conditions that existed was that the working class, as a class, disappeared.

There is no where at the moment where the working class is in such a position.

As a class, numerically, the workers are in a much stronger position.

[LSD]

Isnt that up to the people of cuba themselves?

Basically you&#39;re telling them "suck it up, you&#39;ll get exploited for a hundred years more"

I don&#39;t recall putting a time frame on economic development, and of course it should be up to the people of Cuba. Right now, of course, it&#39;s up to their "leaders" in the "revolutionary government".

But this thread isn&#39;t about imposing models on unresponsive populations, it&#39;s about whether or not the ideas of anarchism have any relevence in the third world. That is, whether the people of, to continue the example Cuba, should adopt anarchist politics in the here and now.

And, again, while I certainly understand the appeal of those politics, I don&#39;t think they&#39;re realistic in the third world, nor could the be in the presently forseeable future.


technically, Spain was very much third world in the 30&#39;s (certainly to todays standards).

Well, the system of "first world / third world" didn&#39;t exist at that time, but it&#39;d be fair to say that Spain was one of the more developed countries on earth at that point.

It wasn&#39;t as advanced as say Germany or the United States, no, but it was by no means what we would call a "third world" country today. For one thing, it wasn&#39;t subject to forieng economic domination and it had a long history of local industrialization with all the socioeconomic consequences that go along with it.

All that being said, I&#39;m not even sure if anarchism was possible large-scale and long-term in Spain 1936. Like with the Paris commune before it, it was an essential landmark in the history of the working class, but I genuinely don&#39;t know if it could have survived, civil war or no civil war.

But it certainly had a better shot there than it would in any third world country you could name today. I mean honestly, what are we debating here? Is anyone seriously arguing that anarchism is presently possible in Nepal???


Also, i think this whole argument about that most third world countries arent advanced enough, well i think most are. Compare the level of industrialisation of france in the late 1800&#39;s, and i think you&#39;ll find it to be of the same level of say...Mexico, or Cuba.

If not less so. I&#39;d wager that, with very few exceptions, even the most "backwards" areas of the world today are more advanced than 18th century Europe, certainly technologically speaking.

But then communism was not attainable in 1800s Europe, was it? I mean, does anyone here really believe that even Paris 1871 could have ever spread beyond the city limits?

And even if it had, how soon before a centralized hierarchical state sprund up to "represent" the masses? The communications technologies were simply not developed yet such that all workers could have a legitimate say in social policy.

Statelessness, and by extension classlessness, require an incredibly advanced infastructure to subsist. Paris in in the 1870s did not have one.

That doesn&#39;t mean that the Paris commune was not an important part of working class history, just that there&#39;s virtually no change that, even had it survived, it would have "developed" into anything more.

Besides, France in the 19th century was an independent capitalist giant with a long history of social revolution and a large domestic industrial workforce. Technologically speaking, the third world may be ostensibly more developed than 19th century France, but socially speaking they are still behind.

These countries need political and economic independence before we can eve start talking about the possibility for communism.


No, a socialist state would not be a small and empowered elite.

Officials only carry out the will of the majority

That&#39;s the theory, but how many times has that actually happened?

Like many statist leftists, you have a remarkably naive faith in the integrity of republicanism. If "representatives" truly represented anyone other than themselves, then the United States would be the "beacon of democracy" it so loves to proclaim itself.

In reality, of course, economic power trumps political machinery.

Republican "responsibility" is a myth. You can put in place as many "checks and ballances" as you want, the fact remains in a statist society, the average person simply doesn&#39;t have the means, time, or motivation to "check up" on their "leaders".

That means that even if the system is ostensibly set up as transparent or accountable, the reality of power is that it perpetuates itself. That&#39;s why "comrade" Fidel has been sitting comfy for nearly 50 years now.

Truly "recallable" leaders get recalled. No one is perfect, and especially when it comes to the complex busines of running a society, the notion that one "leader" could be so good as to never warrant replacement is absurd.

Even if Castro were the smartest human being to ever live, basic comon sense tells us that at some point, new blood would be a good idea.

And yet despite all the propaganda about Cuba&#39;s "democratic" structure, the same "delegates" keep returning and returning. Obviously the same applies to all the other "socialist" states.

Republicanism doesn&#39;t work. Substitionalist politics inevitably result in corruption and corrosion. Not because socialist "delegates" are "evil", but because that kind of political and economic authority is just too tempting to resist.

Even in the absence of obvious personal perks, the ability to excersize that kind of control over a society is intoxicating, especially to the more politicaly and ideologically minded. People like Lenin and Castro who genuinely believe that they have a "plan" for society, how can they possibly be expected to resist the chance to implement it?

I suppose it comes down to which you value more, the real flesh-and-blood working class, or your ideological conception of working class "interests". Because while statist leaders can serve the latter, they can never serve the former.

The only way for the proletariat to truly rule is if it does so directly.

Unfortunately, that just isn&#39;t an option in the third world and so some form of centralized governance is nescessary. It&#39;s important to recognize, however, that that governance isn&#39;t a "transition" to "communism", but just regular old capitalist republicanism.

Now there&#39;s no reason that that republican stage can&#39;t be as painless and democratic as possible, but what happens when self-declared "communists" try and rule is that they allow their ideology to overrule the material reality of their situation.

So countries like Cuba end up with the same guy in power for 50 years and countries like North Korea spend billions of dollard on building missile launchers instead of feeding their peopluation.


Foreign threats will also require a need for a state, precisely due to the hierarchy of the capitalists army, the hierarchy of socialist armies will need to be similar.

Modern Anarchy, How would it defend itself? (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=61617)


So, the state is a necessary evil

In the third world? Yes.

Which is why neither anarchism nor communism is possible. Both nescessitate the elimination of the state.


thats not at all true.

The Russian working class was very small and young in 1900. Less than 5% of the population. Most of that died or fled the cities during the civil war.

I&#39;m not saying that the third world today is identical to that of Russia 1917, merely that the same fundamental conditions exist; namely a lack of advanced infastructure and organization capacity.

Although the Bolsheviks claimed to derive their legitimacy from the will of the people, we both know that they had no means of verifying that assertion. So the "voice" of the proletariat quickly become the assumptions of the rulling bureaucrats.

That would have happened whether or not the civil war had been as bloody as it was. As, indeed, is evident in all the other countries in which Leninist programmes were attempted.

[Enragé]

But, LSD, how do you know when a classless, stateless society is possible then?

For all we know we arent ready by a long fuckin shot, and we&#39;re going to have to wait another 200 years or so
or maybe we&#39;re never going to be read cuz capitalism&#39;s going to shit perhaps because of the energy crisis

so what would you have us do then?
Sit down, shut up, work with the almighty capitalist economy in the hope that some day we might have the ability to have a classless stateless society?
Obviously you&#39;re not advocating that now are you.

But you are saying that to all third world countries, even though they&#39;re far more advanced, as you have admitted, than say england in the late 1800&#39;s, which according to any revolutionary at the time was fit for revolution
Now you may say they were full of shit
but how do we know we&#39;re not full of shit now?

Obviously, we produce, globally, more than enough to do away with scarcity in those goods needed to sustain life. Even Nepal produces enough food etc to keep its citizens alive.
Now, why wouldnt a classless society be possible? Because they havent got 300 highways and one tv every household?
Well then we&#39;re not ready either cuz we havent got flying cars and 6 ipods a person&#33;

so what it all fuckin comes down to is

how do you define "a lack of advanced infastructure and organization capacity"? What is "advanced infrastructure"? Its relative mate&#33; Hundred years from now our infrastructure isnt worth shit while compared to a hundred years ago Nepal&#39;s infrastructure is state of the art&#33;

[rouchambeau]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 08:32 pm
I don&#39;t know if anarchism really is, for the most part, an American phenomenon. I would say that it might appear that way due to the fact that the only anarchists who are ever referenced are Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, etc.
Uh... Bakunin and Kropotkin were Russian. Emma Goldman was a Russian Jew who immigrated to the US. <_<
I suppose I wasn&#39;t clear enough. American anarchists (mostly white) seem to only reference said anarchist theorists (also white).

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

That&#39;s the theory, but how many times has that actually happened?

Well i know you&#39;re not going to like the answer, but i dont believe there has been any socialist states.

What has happened is faced with a non-existent working class, Stalin sought to industrialize as quickly as possible.

Using capitalist relations to do this, because creating armies and nukes is not a lot of motivation for workers to work hard.


Like many statist leftists, you have a remarkably naive faith in the integrity of republicanism. If "representatives" truly represented anyone other than themselves, then the United States would be the "beacon of democracy" it so loves to proclaim itself.

wow, thats a total joke.

In the US and other liberal democracy, your representative doesn&#39;t do what the majority wants, they usually don&#39;t even care, because you elect the representative on what he says he is going to do.

In a socialist state, your representative would do what the majority want. It would be the workers say not his. This is because the representative is a tool in socialism, but a politician in capitalism.

plus, you can have immediate recall, and cap average workers wage. etc.



That means that even if the system is ostensibly set up as transparent or accountable, the reality of power is that it perpetuates itself. That&#39;s why "comrade" Fidel has been sitting comfy for nearly 50 years now.

Truly "recallable" leaders get recalled. No one is perfect, and especially when it comes to the complex business of running a society, the notion that one "leader" could be so good as to never warrant replacement is absurd.

Even if Castro were the smartest human being to ever live, basic common sense tells us that at some point, new blood would be a good idea.

And yet despite all the propaganda about Cuba&#39;s "democratic" structure, the same "delegates" keep returning and returning. Obviously the same applies to all the other "socialist" states.

While i don&#39;t know much about Cuba really, there is one part you are forgetting. Cuba is a country under attack and has a popular revolutionary as president, because he makes it easier for Cuba to resist.

Though, i don&#39;t think you can have socialism in one country so Cuba is going to have messed up features.



Republicanism doesn&#39;t work. Substitionalist politics inevitably result in corruption and corrosion. Not because socialist "delegates" are "evil", but because that kind of political and economic authority is just too tempting to resist.

No, thats not the case.

Corruption occurs because of a lack of material wealth in society.



When things are extremely scarce, there will be corruption.

When things are essentially free, we have superabundance, then there will not be corruption.

Or in capitalist class society, everyone is corrupt, not a lot of people pay for stuff if they can get it for free, providing the risk isn&#39;t too great.

With regard to the republicanism, i don&#39;t know if socialism is republican.

I think the general misconception that Stalinism = socialism is a tool you use to discount “Leninist” argument.

By suggesting that since we&#39;re "Leninist" we must love Mao or Stalin. When most “Leninists” are opposed these days.

I know for examples Trotskyism in the UK Rejects the Stalinist Republican model.

I&#39;m using stalinism not to bash him per se, just because i&#39;m not totally sophisticated in how to describe it.

I would hold to the socialist state being a popular elected parliament, control through workers councils, and then control through local councils. Not top down, but bottom up.


I&#39;m not saying that the third world today is identical to that of Russia 1917, merely that the same fundamental conditions exist; namely a lack of advanced infrastructure and organization capacity.

Although the Bolsheviks claimed to derive their legitimacy from the will of the people, we both know that they had no means of verifying that assertion. So the "voice" of the proletariat quickly become the assumptions of the ruling bureaucrats.

That would have happened whether or not the civil war had been as bloody as it was. As, indeed, is evident in all the other countries in which Leninist programmes were attempted.

Oh man, i get what you&#39;re saying. "Leninism" through top down means, can only industrialize a country.

But, you are missing the important reason, as to why this happened.

In Russia, the working class was obliterated. only the party was left in power.

With no class to exercise power, of course the soon turned Stalinist parties were going to rule. They had no other choice.

In all other countries where "Leninist" programmes were attempted was because industrialization in a single generation is very tempting to nationalists.

And, those nationalist movements incorporated communists.

There is a big difference between Vietnam wanting national independence and industrialization and the formation of a workers state.

[LSD]

But, LSD, how do you know when a classless, stateless society is possible then?

I don&#39;t "know", but I can theorize. Certainly I can learn from past attempts. And if there&#39;s one thing that we can take from previous attempts at socialist or communist or even anarchist revolutions, it&#39;s that the lack of controls will kill you.

Those controls don&#39;t, and cannot, exist in countries without the communications infastructure to support it and without a developed social more of political participation.

That&#39;s not a permanent condition, of course, it can and will change. But it&#39;s hopelessly idealist to imagine that these very physical changes can be "skipped" so long as the "leaders" involved are trustworthy enough.

That&#39;s just not the way the real world works.


For all we know we arent ready by a long fuckin shot, and we&#39;re going to have to wait another 200 years

That&#39;s possible, but highly unlikely. We don&#39;t need "flying cars", just the capacity for every person to directly participate in social governance. In my estimation that capacity already exists in the more advanced first world countries.

If I&#39;m wrong, so be it, there are still revolutionary struggles that need to be fought today and even if we aren&#39;t yet sufficiently advanced, we&#39;re at most a few decades away. So why not start laying the foundation now?


so what would you have us do then?

Try.

Communism hasn&#39;t been attempted in a modern capitalist country in almost 100 years. In my judgment, the technological and socioeconomic changes since then are sufficient to make it workable now, while it probably wasn&#39;t then.

I could be wrong of course, but I think it&#39;s worth a try. I don&#39;t, however, think it&#39;s worth a try in countries which are obviously not developed enough and where, if we go on historical precedent, any such attempt would be devastatingly harmful, if not downright genocidal.

No one said that revolution was a 100% business, but in situations where we can be reasonbly certain that revolution has no hope of success, it&#39;s pure delusion to try it anyway ...especially when we know that the consequences of failure can be so dire.


Obviously, we produce, globally, more than enough to do away with scarcity in those goods needed to sustain life. Even Nepal produces enough food etc to keep its citizens alive.

You&#39;re not making sense. Every society that isn&#39;t undergoing some major calamity produces enough food to keep its population alive, otherwise it would quickly run out of people.

Feudal societies kept their people alive too, not particularly comfortably, but alive nonetheless. Does that mean that feudal England was capable of abolishing class society?

The fact that goods could be more evenly spread, does not mean that they can be more evenly spread. That is, the mere existance of abundance does not imply the economic, social, or infastructural capacity to establish a responsible means of distribution.

On the contrary, for most of post-neolithic history we&#39;ve had material abundance, but it&#39;s only in the past few decades, if that, that we&#39;ve developed anything approaching the means to apportion it equally and efficiently.

It&#39;s not a lack of food that make Nepal an unlikely candidate for an anarchist revolution, it&#39;s the lack of advanced complex local industrialization. So while a "benevolent leader" might be able to apportion that food out in a more equitable way, democratic self-rule just isn&#39;t an option.


Well i know you&#39;re not going to like the answer, but i dont believe there has been any socialist states.

I don&#39;t like or dislike that answer, I think it&#39;s just a statement of fact. But what you&#39;re missing is why there hasn&#39;t been a socialist state, why the workers have failed to take power anywhere dispate the dozens of times that Leninist "socialism" has been attempted.


In the US and other liberal democracy, your representative doesn&#39;t do what the majority wants, they usually don&#39;t even care, because you elect the representative on what he says he is going to do.

In a socialist state, your representative would do what the majority want. It would be the workers say not his. This is because the representative is a tool in socialism, but a politician in capitalism.

That&#39;s a remarkably abstract proposition and, again, it displays a disturbingly naive faith in the power of "good government" to overcome material class relations.

It&#39;s the "new soviet man" approach again. "Socialist" republicanism will be "better" than bourgeois republicanism because the "workers will be in charge" ...except they won&#39;t, their delegates will.

And those delegates still have to get elected in the bourgeois way and then govern in the bourgeois way.

You see, the state, like the political party, is a product of class society and can only functionaly exist in such an environment. Marxists understand this, but where they miss the mark is in assuming that it&#39;s only a one-way flow. The reality is that society is a far more complex animal than that.

The state is dependent on class society, but it also perpetuates class society. Therefore any attempt at eliminating class while maintaining the state will only result in new class formations replacing the old.

That&#39;s why every Leninist revolution has failed so spectacularly, that&#39;s why despite the dedication and best wishes of Communist leaders throughout history, the workers have yet to actually gain power anywhere.

For a proletarian revolution to actually succeed, it must be a liberating process in itself. It must begin and end with the workers on the ground and it must be predicated on worker self-managment and motility.

"Iron discipline" or "centralization" is fundamentally antithetical to this aim and so any revolution predicated on those principles cannot help but fail. "Military-like" party organization may prove useful at overthrowing weak governments, but if coup d&#39;états were our aim, we&#39;d all be social-democrats.

Communism is about more than a change in government, it&#39;s about a change in governance; it&#39;s about replacing top-down coercion with participatory democracy.

Political parties, no matter how they are organized, exist to service an ideology. Workers&#39; syndicates, however, exist to service workers. In my judgment, revolution must come from the latter direction rather than the former.

We cannot succede the bourgeois by doing exactly what they do "with a red flag". Exploitation is at the heart of what the bourgeoisie is and so it is at the heart of their political model as well.

The bourgeois political process is what it is; it cannot be "made" to be proletarian.


With regard to the republicanism, i don&#39;t know if socialism is republican.

The concept of "representatives" and "delegates" is itself bourgeois in nature. So any state based on such republican principles is nescessarily descendent from bourgeois political ideals.

Politicians "manage" society the way that the bourgeosie "manages" the economy. And any system of institutional managers requires an institutional managerial class.

There&#39;s a reason, after all, that politics and money so often overlap. The skills for succeding in one are indistinguishable from those of succeding in the other. That&#39;s why former "socialist" bureaucrats did so well "playing the market" following the collapse of their "workers&#39; states".

The kind of people who tend to get elected are people who are good at playing the political game. And no matter how "accountable" you try and make the system, that will always be the case.

Republicanism encourages apathy and faith-based politics. When people are socialized to believe that political participation means checking off a name every 4 years, they&#39;re unlikely to even consider active involvement.

That&#39;s why despite being set up to encourage "popular representation", the leadership of liberal republics rarely reflect either the make-up or the ideas of the populace at large.

That won&#39;t change no matter how many revolutionary-sounding words you put before "republic".


No, thats not the case.

Corruption occurs because of a lack of material wealth in society.

Except, "material wealth" is a subjective standard and, accordingly, in one form or another, there will always be a "lack" of it.

The Soviet bureacracy didn&#39;t "take over" because Germany failed to revolt or because materials were scarce (when aren&#39;t they?), in fact the bureacracy didn&#39;t even "take over" at all.

Rather it was there from the begining. From the moment that Lenin set up a centralized Bolshevik state he nescessitated a ruling bureaucratic elite.

He didn&#39;t do that "on purpose", but it was the inevitable result of his political approach.

Political parties, by design, centralize authority into the hands of the most "theoretically advanced". This is beneficial when the objective is to promote some ideological line. But working class revolution is not about ideology, it&#39;s about liberation.

The revolutionary process needs to be an emancipatory one. Workers need to learn to manage themselves and their work without "supervision" from anyone. Party-based action does not promote this.

In fact, it does precisely the reverse.

The political party is an invention of the bourgeoisie, and its fundamental purpose is to promote some political line. An inactive membership is irrelevent so long as the party stays ideologically on message.

When a bourgeois party takes power it aims to make changes, surely, but those changes are top-down in nature. Training average workers to be self-empowered is the last thing the bourgeoisie wants.

Political parties work for bourgeois changes to the bourgeois system. They do not work as an insurrectionary tool against the system itself. The proletariat cannot look to the "capitalist example" when attacking the foundations of capitalism itself.

A proletarian revolution is the only kind of revolution in history that seeks to enfranchise the masses. Accordingly, no historical "models" can possibly apply.


I would hold to the socialist state being a popular elected parliament, control through workers councils, and then control through local councils. Not top down, but bottom up.

That&#39;s still top down, most of the power comes from the top, regardless of how the "leaders" are ostensibly selected.

The theory behind parliamentary governance is that if we elected people we "trust" to office, they will "serve" our interests. But "trust" is an ephemeral abstraction, class position is concrete.

Lenin didn&#39;t renege on his State and Revolution promises because he was "evil" or "untrustworthy", he did it because, upon gaining control over the means of production, it was no longer in his class interest to free the workers.

He now had the ability to directly manage the economy and to push it in the directions that he saw fit. That opportunity was simply too tempting for a lifelong theoretician to resist.

That&#39;s the ultimate problem with revolutionary "leadership" in any form, if the revolution is successful, the machinery for a new state despotism are already in place and the party elite all too smoothly transition into the new rulling class.

Besides, this notion of "party democracy" is and always has been a complete joke.

Workers do not have the time, resources, or dedication nescessary to seriously challenge the leadership of their party. "Choosing" a leader mostly means picking between elite party celebrity A and elite party celebrity B.

Again, workers do not have the time to play the party politics game, not on a direct level and not on an indirect one.

Their self-rule must flow directly, it cannot be obstructed and redirected by plane after plane of byzantine bureacuracy.


Oh man, i get what you&#39;re saying. "Leninism" through top down means, can only industrialize a country.

But, you are missing the important reason, as to why this happened.

There are always "reasons", but after a while, it starts to get rather tired.

You see what&#39;s so damning about Leninism&#39;s various catastrophes is that, with a couple of exceptions, these experiments were allowed to run pretty much unhindered. No state is without problems and obviously there were many problems faced by the various "socialist" states throughout history, but all things considered, they had it pretty damn easy&#33;

There were no fascist armies knocking down their gates and there was capitalist invasion to reverse their "victories". In dozens of countries, across the world, overwhelmingly earnest and well-meaning "communists" tried their best to implement socialist policies along the lines that Lenin laid down and all failed.

Does that mean that Leninism is intrinsically decrepid? I suppose not. But it sure does hint in that direction.

Obviously it all could be one enormous coincidence and there&#39;s just a grand material conspiracy to discredit Leninism. Who knows, maybe it all is just chance. Maybe Leninism is workable but it&#39;s just never been "given the shot".

...but you know what? At this point I don&#39;t even think that it matters.

If Leninism, for all its overt flaws and anachronistic rubbish, is realistic pragmatic route to "socialism", then there must be literally dozens of others. There is so little structurally "unique" about Leninism that it&#39;s basically impossible that it&#39;s the "only way" to Marxism.

Therefore while it&#39;s possible that abandoning Leninism would be a mistake, if so, it would be a tiny one. Whereas if I&#39;m right, and "Leninism" is an instrinsically oppressive form of proto-Stalinist bureaucratism, dumping it at soon as possible could be invaluable.


In Russia, the working class was obliterated. only the party was left in power.

With no class to exercise power, of course the soon turned Stalinist parties were going to rule. They had no other choice.

In all other countries where "Leninist" programmes were attempted was because industrialization in a single generation is very tempting to nationalists.

You hit the key word there, "tempting". "Leaders" are inevitably tempted by the power of their office. Whether to serve their own petty interests, or ideologically "reshape" society, no matter what their attitudes going in, they will eventually become corrupted by the position.

You blame the calamity on Russia on the "destruction" of the working class, but you know as well as I do that the proletariat cannot be "destroyed", production is depdendent on having workers work.

So what you really mean by "destroyed" is disenfranchised, cut off from the systems of power. Now the war was certainly responsible for a lot of that, deurbanization and all that.

But it&#39;s facetious to assert that absent the war, that process wouldn&#39;t have happened anyway. And that&#39;s not just theory, it&#39;s historical fact since it&#39;s what happened in every other similar attempt at "socialism".

And the reason is that disenfranchisement is inevitable, no matter how revolutionary the leaders of movement involved, if there&#39;s no reliable means for the workers to directly shape policy.

It&#39;s, again, that whole "vanguard" fallacy. The Russian "vanguard" was made up of millions and millions of workers, obviously they couldn&#39;t all become "commissars" or politbureau chairman; so the Bolsheviks appointed themselves to positions of power and ruled "on behalf" of the working class.

...not unlike how George Bush rules "on behalf" of the American people.

Now, George Bush was up for election, twice. Neither of those elections were particularly fair or representative, but it&#39;s still two more times than Lenin was ever elected.

Lenin didn&#39;t see the "need" to subject himself to the bother of elections since in his mind, he was the "voice" of the "vanguard" of the masses. In reality, of course, there was no possible way of verifying such a claim.

Which is why, again, Leninist "socialism" is actually less democratic than alternative social-democratic approaches. The idealism and ideology of Leninist notions of "transition" and "vanguard" obstruct any development towards genuine liberal republicanism.

That&#39;s not to say that third world countries should prostitute themselves out to the nearest multinational. On the contrary, I again would say that Cuba is an excellent economic example ...just not a particularly good political one.

If it were to lose all this Leninist nonsense about its "role" in the "world revolution", though, it just might achieve something truly asounding.

[Enragé]

i feel kinda stupid now but


democratic self-rule just isn&#39;t an option.


why?

Why can you not gather in your town square and simply agree upon how to share resources?
Its a matter of organisation thats all, just decentralise the whole lot and if you need more towns to do a certain thing, well then you elect your representative and he&#39;ll say what he&#39;s told to. Sure, in less developed countries this will be a more slow process than in an advanced country since most likely modern methods of communication dont exist, but then again life generally has a slower pace than it does in advanced countries so it doesnt really matter.

[Rawthentic]

NKOS, in underveloped nations, there simply does not exist the political or economic means for mass control. For one, they are many times agrarian states, not urban ones. Also, the working class is young and forming.

[LSD]

why?

Why can you not gather in your town square and simply agree upon how to share resources?

Because there&#39;s only so many people that have the time or means to show up to such a meeting and there are only so many times a year that you can realistically hold it.

Which means that most of the time, there&#39;s no workable means of determing what people actually want. "Sharing resources" isn&#39;t a one time thing, it&#39;s a continous process which requires constant intercommunication.

How exactly do you propose a factory collective in Kathamndu would determine production requirements? Most of the people in the surrounding areas don&#39;t even have telephones, let alone computers, and visiting each one of them to manually ask them is hardly a realistic option.

There&#39;s a reason that communism wasn&#39;t achievable 1000 years ago, and it wasn&#39;t that people weren&#39;t capable of getting together in a "town square".

In an anarchist society, the role of government is played by the entire society. Well government doesn&#39;t get together once a year, it&#39;s a perpetual business and an incredibly unpredictable one at that.

And so unless the infastructure exists such that everyone can participate at all times, authority will organically centralize. "Delegate" systems will begin to materialize and, before long, some form of hierachical state will be established.

That&#39;s not a "bad thing", in fact it&#39;s unavoidable at that stage of development, but it certainly isn&#39;t "anarhist" by any means; and its the those anti-state states which are the most dangerous.

Because if they don&#39;t admit that they have the power that they do, they&#39;re unable to put in the checks and ballances which are required.

It&#39;s why the Soviet Union never developed basic liberal republican systems, it&#39;s leaders were so convinced that they weren&#39;t just another republic that they refused to even consider democratic reforms.

And so instead you get the near-absolute rule of state organizations with innocious names like "general secretariat of the communist party" and "committee for state security".

Anarchism isn&#39;t so different from Marxism that it can&#39;t be corrupted. If Lenin had been an "true believer" anarchist instead of a "true believer" Marxist, the Soviet Union still woudln&#39;t have worked.

1917 Russia was just not ready for communism.


well then you elect your representative and he&#39;ll say what he&#39;s told to

In other words, you set up a state.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

I don&#39;t like or dislike that answer, I think it&#39;s just a statement of fact. But what you&#39;re missing is why there hasn&#39;t been a socialist state, why the workers have failed to take power anywhere dispate the dozens of times that Leninist "socialism" has been attempted.

I&#39;m not sure how to go about answering this, because you see, after 1917 the subsequent revolution were not Leninist. At least i wouldn&#39;t agree on calling them Leninist. Because, Lenin argued that the working class should unite into one party. But where this wasn&#39;t the case, due to sectarianism, two (or more) parties should be set up and the workers will gravitate to the one they feel most attracted too. Lenin argued this in “left wing communism”. So, from in the 1930&#39;s this argument had been rejected, and Lenin was censored.
The following revolutions therefore, who sought support from the Soviet Union, had one party only, which needed “Iron discipline” to function, purely because the organisations didn&#39;t have the support of the workers.
Like the Chinese revolution of 1949, couldn&#39;t be called Leninist, because the workers movement was smashed before 1949. What resulted was not the communist party being &#39;put to the test&#39; as it should have been, but it just assumed power off the back of civil war. It was a break with feudalism, but not a workers revolutionary movement, as 1917 had been.



That&#39;s a remarkably abstract proposition and, again, it displays a disturbingly naive faith in the power of "good government" to overcome material class relations.

It&#39;s the "new soviet man" approach again. "Socialist" republicanism will be "better" than bourgeois republicanism because the "workers will be in charge" ...except they won&#39;t, their delegates will.

And those delegates still have to get elected in the bourgeois way and then govern in the bourgeois way.

You see, the state, like the political party, is a product of class society and can only functionaly exist in such an environment. Marxists understand this, but where they miss the mark is in assuming that it&#39;s only a one-way flow. The reality is that society is a far more complex animal than that.

The state is dependent on class society, but it also perpetuates class society. Therefore any attempt at eliminating class while maintaining the state will only result in new class formations replacing the old.

That&#39;s why every Leninist revolution has failed so spectacularly, that&#39;s why despite the dedication and best wishes of Communist leaders throughout history, the workers have yet to actually gain power anywhere.

For a proletarian revolution to actually succeed, it must be a liberating process in itself. It must begin and end with the workers on the ground and it must be predicated on worker self-managment and motility.

"Iron discipline" or "centralization" is fundamentally antithetical to this aim and so any revolution predicated on those principles cannot help but fail. "Military-like" party organization may prove useful at overthrowing weak governments, but if coup d&#39;états were our aim, we&#39;d all be social-democrats.

Communism is about more than a change in government, it&#39;s about a change in governance; it&#39;s about replacing top-down coercion with participatory democracy.

Political parties, no matter how they are organized, exist to service an ideology. Workers&#39; syndicates, however, exist to service workers. In my judgment, revolution must come from the latter direction rather than the former.

We cannot succede the bourgeois by doing exactly what they do "with a red flag". Exploitation is at the heart of what the bourgeoisie is and so it is at the heart of their political model as well.

The bourgeois political process is what it is; it cannot be "made" to be proletarian.


Iron discipline and centralization, are only required in a situation when revolutionaries are faced with being relocated to Siberia. It was simply the experience of revolutionaries in Russia, that meant in order to achieve objectives, they needed to work together in a super organised way, to protect themselves.

Lenin didn&#39;t argue for this to be the case in places other than Russia, each situation would require its own strategy and tactics.

The party, in Russia the Bolsheviks, was expanded during the revolution to Include anyone who wanted to join. This included Muslims, women, everyone really. What this says is, that Lenin was trying to establish, in difficult conditions, a working class organisation which had cultural hegemony.

I would like to say though, i do think Marxism Leninism is about workers self management, and governance. My problem with Syndicalism, which i think is the best form of anarchism, is that Unions are also a response to bourgeois society. They have leadership, elections, recall, and bureaucrats too.

Forming a state, is always going to be necessary when the world cultural hegemony is bourgeois. A syndicalist society would have to form an army to defend itself also, and it would also have to have codes of conduct for those soldiers, they would need to be accountable too.

That&#39;s the formation of a state.
And just so we are clear, Marx&#39;s main criticism i believe, was that a state will always arise, while there are different classes. .



The goal of a Leninist party is to orchestrate the overthrow of the existing government by force and seize power on behalf of the proletariat, and then implement a dictatorship of the proletariat. The party must then use the powers of government to educate the proletariat, so as to remove the various modes of false consciousness the bourgeois have instilled in them in order to make them more docile and easier to exploit economically, such as religion and nationalism.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is theoretically to be governed by a decentralized system of proletarian direct democracy, in which workers hold political power through local councils known as soviets

That is the basis of leninism, i got it from the wiki on Leninism, i hope you will forgive me :)

So, when you describe all the other countries that supposedly had Leninist leadership, you understand that these countries attempted to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat? And a direct democracy through workers councils?
I would argue, that the following revolutions, were Stalinist, because that is what was seen by nationalist leaders as the best strategy. A workers democracy just wasn&#39;t on their agenda, and the workers didnt have the class power to do it themselves.
Ultimately, while i think most of your criticism is valid, but only if you canned Leninism and said stalinism instead. .

[Enragé]

In other words, you set up a state.


yea well but recallable, at any point in time when the people so desire.
And only when the situation requires, as in if the decision cant be made in a certain area cuz it influences most others.

I mean, even now today, why would everything be decided by everyone in the sense that i get to decide if they are going to build speed bumps in another part of the "country"?

if not through a system of worker-councils and delegates, how would a communist area be organized?

[More Fire for the People]

How exactly do you propose a factory collective in Kathamndu would determine production requirements? Most of the people in the surrounding areas don&#39;t even have telephones, let alone computers, and visiting each one of them to manually ask them is hardly a realistic option.
They could keep record of customers for two or three years and analyze growth trends and predict future allotments. Just because it&#39;s Kathmandu valley doesn&#39;t mean people can&#39;t learn math and statistics. Besides, a collective could also work towards modernization.

[Cryotank Screams]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 09:10 pm
American anarchists (mostly white) seem to only reference said anarchist theorists (also white).
Because they are the most well known Anarchists whom have made large amounts of contributions to the theoretical paradigm, hence why they reference them, their race shouldn&#39;t even be taken into account, nor is even an issue.

[LSD]

Because, Lenin argued that the working class should unite into one party.

Which, again, is a practical impossiblity, at least in any meaningful sense.

I mean, yeah, tecnically 3 or 4 millions Russian workers could have "joined" the Bolshevik party, but they still wouldn&#39;t have had any influence on the actual running of the party or, after 1918, on the actual running of the country.

The party structure is, again, intrinsically capitalist in function. So it doesn&#39;t matter what percentaqe of it&#39;s membership or "delegates" are technically workers, it will nonetheless always be fundamentally antithetical to proletarian organization.

Remember, fascist groups can be made up of workers too, that doesn&#39;t make them any less petty-bourgeois as organizations nor does it make them any less of a threat to the working class at large.

The American democratic party is almost entirely made of workers at its base, nonetheless because it is a bourgeois political party, its membership statistics are wholly irrelevent.

The nature of political parties is that the leadership very rarely reflects the party at large. Ideologues and bureacrats are the only ones who have the dedication and energy to rise to the top. The rest barely have time to attend meetings.

At its hight, the CPSU counted something like 10% of the Soviet population among its members, around half of those were industrial workers. Despite the official tally, however, no one but the most die hard "revisionist" would claim that those 9 odd million workers had any say whatsover over state policy.

Stalin and Khruschev and Gorbachev did not defer to the "will" of the proletariat, they "judged" what was in the "popular interest" and acted accordingly. And they did so because that&#39;s what Lenin had done before them.

Power perpetuates itself and once it&#39;s established it does not dissapate without a fight. Lenin and his successors may have meant well, but because they operated within a centralized and anti-democratic power structure, they could not help but be oppressive.

A political party is designed to promote an ideology, the most "effective" means of doing this is to centralize and restrict power to those who are most expert in and most dedicated to the said ideology.

I think it goes without saying that that&#39;s not particularly conducive to democracy.


Like the Chinese revolution of 1949, couldn&#39;t be called Leninist, because the workers movement was smashed before 1949. What resulted was not the communist party being &#39;put to the test&#39; as it should have been, but it just assumed power off the back of civil war. It was a break with feudalism, but not a workers revolutionary movement, as 1917 had been.

There&#39;s a lot more in common between 1917 and 1949 than you want to admit. In both cases, the proletariat was a distinct minority of the population, in both cases the revolutions in question were largely peasant based, and in both cases the postrevolutionary government turned out to be hopeslessly corrupt and despotic.

Is that "coincidence"? I don&#39;t think so. I think it&#39;s the inevitable result of trying to graft communism onto societies which are not ready for it. Which lack the technological, the economic, and the sociopolitical infastrcture to achieve classlessness.

There were workers in 1949 China, there were a lot of workers. Were they "crushed"? Hard to say, but if they were the body that had crushed them was the Communist Party of China.

The CPC didn&#39;t "end up" with lack of revolutionary workers, they contrived that situation themselves. Their reasoning, of course, being that anything that helped the party get into power was ultimately in the interests of the proletariat.

An approach which is strikingly similar to Lenin&#39;s and the Bolsheviks. In fact it&#39;s been the approach of every Leninist party throughout history. Political power for the "vanguard" party is seen as the sole means by which the workers can free themselves so anything done in support the party is "ialectically transformed as serving the working class.

The reality, however, is that no matter how ideologically hardcore its leadership may be, the only body that can free the proletariat is the proletariat, the entire proletariat.

Those societies in which that kind of mass organization is not possible are simply not ready for communis.

That&#39;s not "bad", it&#39;s just the reality of material development; it requires time.


The party, in Russia the Bolsheviks, was expanded during the revolution to Include anyone who wanted to join. This included Muslims, women, everyone really. What this says is, that Lenin was trying to establish, in difficult conditions, a working class organisation which had cultural hegemony.

No, what it says is that he was a politician trying to bolster his political support.

There was a good deal of competition going on between the Bolsheviks and other left-leaning parties and it was in everyone&#39;s interest to try and "prove" that they had the "loyalty" of the working class.

After 1918, a lot of people suddenly became eager to join the Bolshevik (now Communist) party, but that&#39;s hardly surprising. It&#39;s not like the Bolsheviks were some evangelical church spreading a new religion, they were a faction of a socialist party with strong roots across Russia.

They were also operating within remarkably revolutionary and radical times in which most of the working and peasant classes were already resistant to the existing government.

Remember, the February revolution was not a "Marxist" one, it was merely a popular, and generally left-leaning, insurrection against the Tsar.

After the failures of the Provisional Government many workers began to turn to Marxist principles, but many more simply turned to self-management and "trade-unionist" soliditarity.

When Lenin and the Bolsheviks launched the coup of October 1917, most workers were willing to give them a shot. Although they would soon see what a tragic mistake this would be, at the time they were unwilling to foster another civil war and hoped that the Bolsheviks could protect the gains of the revolution.

If another group had had the instincts and political will to sieze power, the Bolsheviks would be half a chapter in the history of Revolutionary Russia. Giving the "credit" for the radicalization of the Russian working class to a handful of Petrograd activists is to ignore the historical forces that Marxism is predicated on studying.


My problem with Syndicalism, which i think is the best form of anarchism, is that Unions are also a response to bourgeois society. They have leadership, elections, recall, and bureaucrats too.

Obviously, but those bourgeois attributes are not fundamental to the concept, as they are in a political party.

And if your "problem with" syndicalism is that most unions today have been tained by bourgeois notions of organizing, how can you supprot party-based organizing which is predicated on those same notions?

No matter how bad unions right now might be, political parties remain a hundred times worse; when it comes to bureacracy, when it comes to alienation, when it comes to role of the leadership.

Again, it all comes down to purpose. Political parties are by nescessity top down, the entire organization is designed to propel the leadership into power. Everything that the party does is to achieve that end.

Workers&#39; syndicates, by contrast, have no political ambition in and of themselves. Instead of the base working to support the ambitions of the centre, the

None of that is to say that any current unions are anything approaching what&#39;s needed. But then neither is any other proletariat organization. But at least in the syndicalist model, we have somewhere to start.

At least we have a means by which to structure revolutionary organizing out of the class war itself, and not the other way around. At least it gives us a way to harness our economic power in an organic, rather than grafted way.

Even more importantly, though, "leaders" and "delegates" can be entirely removed from the syndicalist paradigm without significantly altering the base form. The party structure, however, only exists so long as it has a leadership.

No amount of technological change or restructuring can ever make the bourgeois party anything other than a top-down instrument. As long as its purpose is to put an elite cadre into power, that elite cadre will have to exist.

Union delegates, at their core, are merely means of communication. Ways for locals to express themselves. We have better means of doing that now, ones which don&#39;t require actually people as intermediaries.

Technology has advanced to the point that syndicate-wide decisions can now actually be made syndicate-wide with no need for "leaders" or other bourgeois constructs.

And any ad hoc central bodies which might be required can be closely monitered and, perhaps most importantly, run entirely accountably and transparently.

Obviously that can&#39;t happen in third world countries where that kind of transparency is physically impossible.


A syndicalist society would have to form an army to defend itself also

Nonsense.

Decentralized autonomous autonomous resistance groups have proven themselves just as effective at resisting the efforts of law enforcement, if not more so. The more hierarchical and centralized a revolutionary organization, the more vulnerable it is to attacks at the top.

Besides, this is just another indication of the fundamental flaw of basing revolutionary activity on a fundamentally bourgeois institution like the political party.

Because the organiztion itself has no natural basis in proletarian life, meetings are nearly impossible and the role of the "leadership" becomes that much more important. Constant threat of "discovery" or "inflitration" makes participatory decision-making more and more subject to the "leading voice" and very soon we have virtual if not de jure one-man rule.

If, instead, proletarian resistance is made up of proletarian associations, real workers cannot help but be involved. No "central committee" will be "forced" to take the reigns and political action will flow from natural class war instead of from some artificial faux-"proletarian" petty-bourgeois "party"

And if you&#39;re talking post-revolution, I again refer you to this thread (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=61617). Anarchist societies will not need hierarchical standing armies.


Ultimately, while i think most of your criticism is valid, but only if you canned Leninism and said stalinism instead. .

Except there&#39;s no such thing as "Stalinism", at least not in an ideological sense. Not unless you consider Soviet apologism to be a distinct class of leftism.

Stalinism is a description, a short-hand for describing what the Soviet Union, and subsquent "workers states" actually were rather than what Lenin theoriezed they could have been.

Some people glorify that particular brand of despotism and I suppose we could legitimately call them "Stalinists", but they make up rather small and insignificant portion of the international left.

Most of the time, when one uses the word "Stalinist", they&#39;re talking about something other than themselves; a person, a state, a party, something. And in that usage, the word is more of a propaganda technique than anything else. A way of trying to excorsize practical Leninism from political leninism.

But like it or not, every single "Stalinist" failure came out of a Marxist-Leninst party siezing power.

Maybe that&#39;s all an enormous coincidence and Leninism only 13 more failures away from succeding ...but you know what? At this point I don&#39;t even think it matters anymore.

If Leninism, for all its overt flaws and anachronistic rubbish, is realistic pragmatic route to "socialism", then there must be literally dozens of others. There is so little structurally "unique" about Leninism that it&#39;s basically impossible that it&#39;s the "only way" to Marxism.

Therefore while it&#39;s possible that abandoning Leninism would be a mistake, if so, it would be a tiny one. Whereas if I&#39;m right, and "Leninism" is an instrinsically oppressive form of proto-Stalinist bureaucratism, dumping it at soon as possible could be invaluable.


yea well but recallable, at any point in time when the people so desire.

That&#39;s been tried before and it never works. Certainly it can&#39;t work in third world countries in which workers have no realistic mechanism of checking up on their "delegates" so as to know when recallmight be called for.

Rather you end up with a system of regulated "recall" votes which is basically just another way of saying bourgeois elections ...if you even get that.

&#39;Cause most of the time, attempts at setting up this kind of "delegate" system just result in pure despotism, usually because no one bothered to put into place any basic liberal controls.

That&#39;s what happens when de fact and de jure government bear no resemblence, when a state does not acknowledge that it is fact a state.

It&#39;s very difficult to reign in that which you do not admit exists.


I mean, even now today, why would everything be decided by everyone in the sense that i get to decide if they are going to build speed bumps in another part of the "country"?

It wouldn&#39;t.

Speedbump-related decisions would be made by the local community affected, if it became a serious concern outside of that community (somehow), a broader group could be consulted.

I highly doubt that any situation could emerge in which a speedbump became of "national" importance.

None of that requires "leadership" of any sort, however, recallable or otherwise.


if not through a system of worker-councils and delegates, how would a communist area be organized?

Democratically.

Most decisions would emerge locally, either at the production level or the community level, with only a few issues (mostly of foreign affairs or civil rights) being addressed at an absolute level.

For those areas in which specialized attention is needed, as in engineering, civil planning, etc... ad hoc bodies can be set up, but they would operate on very limited mandates with all decision being subject to public approval.

Workers&#39; decisions will still be transmitted, there just won&#39;t be intermediate bureaucrats doing the transmission.

In an advanced interconnected society, they&#39;re simply not nescessary.


They could keep record of customers for two or three years and analyze growth trends and predict future allotments.

How did they get those orders in the first place? How did they operate for those "two or three" years in which they had no statistical models to go on?

Besides if you produce according to predicted allotment rather than communicated demand, you&#39;re going to end up with either too litte, which creates scarcity, or too much, which requires overusing materials.

Either way, you&#39;re going to end up with gaps and people are going to start look elsewhere for what they want. At the same time, you&#39;ll see local factories start to concern themselves more with their immediate community than the figure at the end of some statistical equation.

Even in an ideal world, the figures being used won&#39;t mesh with those being used by other factories around the country, including those they are producing for and those who produce for them.

Also, I would remind you that three fourths of Nepalis are in agriculture. Are you proposing that each farm come up with its own predictions?

You&#39;re basically talking about economic chaos, and in a country that already has a scarcity of materials, just went through a (probably bloody) revolution, and has no capacity for mass communication, that would be suicidal.

The only way to make statistics-based production workable is to use the same statistics across the board. Well, there&#39;s a term for that kind of system, it&#39;s called a command economy and it requires a state to function.

Again, do you think it&#39;s a coincidence that "socialist" third world countries have inevitably turned to central planning? Or that communism didn&#39;t emerge 500 years ago?

Statistics can help, but there&#39;s no subsititute for an advanced and interconnected population. And they&#39;re worse than useless unless they have some direct connection to the real world either because they&#39;re centrally mandated or are a product of market forces.

Yes, you read that right, market forces.

A third world country today is going to have some form of capital economy. The degree to which it is controlled and to which it is "free" is dependent on the details of the country in question. But it&#39;s an historical inevitability that capital will exist.

You can&#39;t abolish private property without replacing it with an equally rigorous system and that, again, isn&#39;t doable in the third world. Private property sucks, but it&#39;s simple, which means it&#39;s ridiculously easy to enforce. And, like it or not, communism is anything but.

Every aspect of communism is predicated on a maximum movement of people, products, and ideas.

Do I really need to point out where the third world is lacking in these respects?


Besides, a collective could also work towards modernization.

What, on its own?

Modernization is a nation-wide enterprise. It would have to, again, be planned to have any chance of success.

[Enragé]

That&#39;s been tried before and it never works. Certainly it can&#39;t work in third world countries in which workers have no realistic mechanism of checking up on their "delegates" so as to know when recallmight be called for.

Reports are sent back and forth regarding what the delegate votes for, and against. Even if not everybody has a telephone, to get one every village wouldnt be too hard, or else we&#39;ll just do it with morse code or if even thats not possible people riding horses.

The point is that this rarely is needed, because most things can be decided locally (i.e in one village) or regionally (i.e 2-3 villages). Hence the speed bump idea, cuz indeed, no delegates are required.


Most decisions would emerge locally, either at the production level or the community level, with only a few issues (mostly of foreign affairs or civil rights) being addressed at an absolute level.

er yeh
and how will you manage the absolute matters?
By electing some guy who goes over to the big council thingy and says what he&#39;s told too.
If not we cut his head off :P
you get the idea.
The only difference will be that in advanced society&#39;s we&#39;ll use a device (internet, phone etc) to transmit the will of the worker, while in a less advanced society we use a person.
The end result is the same, cuz if that person doesnt say exactly what the workers want him to say, there&#39;ll be hell to pay.

[LSD]

er yeh
and how will you manage the absolute matters?

Democratically, across the board. (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=62584)


The point is that this rarely is needed, because most things can be decided locally

Actually, most things will be decided organically, meaning without the need for "governmental" involvement at all. But that can&#39;t happen without a postcapitalist economy underpinning the whole affair.

As long as private property exists, you&#39;re going to need a strong state to counterbalance it. Otherwise, you end up with libertarian hell.

I think the problem here is that you&#39;re asking me questions about an theoretical anarchist society and then trying to apply them to socities in which the basic foundations for anarchism don&#39;t even exist.

The reason that anarchism will require so little active governance isn&#39;t that we "wish" it to be so, but that postcapitalist economics is intrinsically self-regulating. Like the "market", it requires very little management.

But unlike the market, it is predicated on a rather high level of technological development.

That&#39;s true of most economic systems, of course; slavery required writing, capitalism required the printing press, communism will require computer networking.

Trying to apply the one without the other can only result in chaos; as outlined above in response to Hopscotch Anthill&#39;s hypothetical.


you get the idea.
The only difference will be that in advanced society&#39;s we&#39;ll use a device (internet, phone etc) to transmit the will of the worker, while in a less advanced society we use a person.
The end result is the same

Not it&#39;s not.

"Devices" allow every worker to be informed at all times and to directly make decisions. "Delegates" can only consult so many of their "constituents" at so many times at so many opportunities.

Most of the time, they&#39;ll be operating on what they think they&#39;re supposed to do. It&#39;s not like they can drive back to their "riding" and ask everybody. Even if they tried that, people would quickly tire of the delay and bother that such a system caused.

So they&#39;d replace it with something more sensible like regular recall votes, where people could judge the performence of their "delegates" and decide whether or not to keep them.

And you&#39;d end up with a republic.

Again, that&#39;s not "bad", it&#39;s just the inevitable political organization that will emerge at that level of development. There&#39;s a reason that feudal economies manifest feudal governments, and capitalist economies manifest capitalist ones.

If communism were merely a matter of "good ideas" and "surpluses", we&#39;d have had it 1000 years ago. They certainly could have had "delegates" back then, as in there were people who could have communicated what other people thought.

But that didn&#39;t happen. And it didn&#39;t happen because in 1007, there wasn&#39;t a place in the world that could have supported republican government. The technology and economy simply wasn&#39;t yet ready for that kind of complex governmental procedure.

Just like much of the world today is not yet ready for stateless governance of property-less economics.

You can&#39;t skip development by wishing it were so.


cuz if that person doesnt say exactly what the workers want him to say, there&#39;ll be hell to pay.

In other words, you&#39;ll hold an election and their performence will be evaluated. An excellent idea, but not an anarchist one.

[Enragé]

... you&#39;re right

revolutionary society just got a fuckload harder to achieve, but you&#39;re right.


But, say, we have a revolution now in parts of the extremely developed countries. Well, we could have statelessness and organic decisionmaking there...
except we&#39;d have whole parts of the world breathing down our necks..
what then?

Workers&#39; militias...administered by whom? What if all the laptops get blown to peaces? We&#39;re fucked?
And the undeveloped world? Wait untill they catch up?
The bourgeoisie there will just go about their business knowing that when laptops flood the markets communism breaks out?

im just having a hard time imagining a plausible scenario..

[this is getting more and more offtopic, but yeh]

[LSD]

revolutionary society just got a fuckload harder to achieve, but you&#39;re right.

Well no one ever said that it was easy, but better it be correct than simple.

I think we&#39;ve all seen the dangers of trying to "dumb down" communism to fit any situation in any place at any time.


But, say, we have a revolution now in parts of the extremely developed countries. Well, we could have statelessness and organic decisionmaking there...
except we&#39;d have whole parts of the world breathing down our necks..
what then?
Workers&#39; militias...administered by whom?

Modern Anarchism (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=61617
).


What if all the laptops get blown to peaces? We&#39;re fucked?

That doesn&#39;t seem like a particularly likely scenario.

What if all the printing presses had gotten blown up in 1750? Would that have fucked over capitalism? Probably ...but reason suggests that they just would have built knew ones.


And the undeveloped world? Wait untill they catch up?

Basically. We can, and should, help out in those areas where it would be feasible; certainly we could offer a strong counterweight to the forces of international capitalist imperialism.

Which means that third world countries would be able to develop a lot faster and a lot healthier thant they would under neocolonial domination.

But until they do develop, we&#39;ll have to allow them to follow their own social process. That means tolerating that capitalism will exist and exploitation will occur.

And while that will undoudably be difficult for many, we can&#39;t force classlessness on people who aren&#39;t ready for it.

We&#39;re materialists, and that means that our support for communism should be about more than our personal or moral objections to exploitation. Obviously none of us like what capitalism does, but that alone isn&#39;t a good enough reason to oppose it.

No, to legitimately oppose capitalism we have to believe that there&#39;s an objective alternative. We have to know that the parasitic classes no longer have a useful economic role to play.

And while that is true in the first world (in my opinion at least), it most certainly is not in the third. So while we may not like seeing capitalism continue to flourish, in a world this developmentally diverse, revolution cannot be a one-off affair.


The bourgeoisie there will just go about their business knowing that when laptops flood the markets communism breaks out?

Yes. Because the bourgeoisie doesn&#39;t think in historical materialist terms. They will always believe that their country will follow a different course.

And besides, what alternative do they have? It&#39;s not like they can turn back the clock on progress. Capitalism is just as dependent on technology as communism is and if the bourgeoisie want to stay in the black they&#39;re going have to keep finding new things to sell.

The old adage of the capitalist and the rope is more than just a joke, it&#39;s also an illustration of how historical materialism transcends personal whims.

Individual capitalists may recognize the danger of advancing too far, but there&#39;s nothing they can do about it. &#39;Cause even if all the big bosses get together and resolve not to develop one step more, somebody will.

Why? &#39;Cause there&#39;s money to be made.

It&#39;s like racism, individual capitalists might be racist, many of them undoubtably bennefit from it. But, in the end, capitalism cannot help but end it. It&#39;s just one too many hindrances on the undettered flow of capital.

[chimx]

To name a few...

Anarchism and Syndicalism have a very rich history in Latin America. The FORA in Argentina was an extremely powerful labor federation and explicitly anarcho-communist. Mexican anarcho-syndicalism had also been extremely strong.

Following the March 1st movement in Korea, Korean anarchism flarred up in Manchuria, though it was eventually beaten out by Marxist-Leninists.

The IWW had a strong presence in South Africa.

But yes, it was dominant in Europe since Europe is the place anarchism was birthed.

[Enragé]

Basically. We can, and should, help out in those areas where it would be feasible; certainly we could offer a strong counterweight to the forces of international capitalist imperialism.

Which means that third world countries would be able to develop a lot faster and a lot healthier thant they would under neocolonial domination.

But until they do develop, we&#39;ll have to allow them to follow their own social process. That means tolerating that capitalism will exist and exploitation will occur.

And while that will undoudably be difficult for many, we can&#39;t force classlessness on people who aren&#39;t ready for it.

We&#39;re materialists, and that means that our support for communism should be about more than our personal or moral objections to exploitation. Obviously none of us like what capitalism does, but that alone isn&#39;t a good enough reason to oppose it.

No, to legitimately oppose capitalism we have to believe that there&#39;s an objective alternative. We have to know that the parasitic classes no longer have a useful economic role to play.

And while that is true in the first world (in my opinion at least), it most certainly is not in the third. So while we may not like seeing capitalism continue to flourish, in a world this developmentally diverse, revolution cannot be a one-off affair.


hmm yes..

but how about a workers&#39; republic? Somewhat like the USSR, but with political freedoms, and freedom of speech?
Obviously it isnt socialist, far from classless, but it did industrialise russia and pushed it far into the 20th century.
couldnt that be possible?


And as for the link to the other topic, i agree basicly with your post there.
Thanks.

[LSD]

but how about a workers&#39; republic? Somewhat like the USSR, but with political freedoms, and freedom of speech?
Obviously it isnt socialist, far from classless, but it did industrialise russia and pushed it far into the 20th century.
couldnt that be possible?

Absolutely.

Although I think the term "workers&#39; republic" is something of a misnomer, I agree 100% that some form of ultrademocratic state capitalism is probably the best model for the third world.

Don&#39;t kid yourself, though, there still is a vibrant capitalist economy going on in Cuba and the Cuban bourgeoisie is alive an well. It isn&#39;t nearly as powerful as it is in other third world countries, but Cuba is nowhere near statelessness.

But just because the south can&#39;t skip capitalism doesn&#39;t mean they shouldn&#39;t labour to make it as painless as possible. Like I said earlier in this thread, Cuba is an excellent economic model for the third world.

I just wish that its ideological blindness didn&#39;t prevent it from enacting nescessary political reforms.

Again, the problem with third world Leninism is that the states that come out of it are incapable of admitting what they are. They&#39;re so caught up in some illusory "transition", that they never get around to fashioning a truly republican republic.

And we end up with messes like the USSR or the PRC.

Meanwhile, of course, first world Leninism is completely unnescessary. Developed countries don&#39;t need "workers republics", they need communism, something that their infastructure is finally developed enough to support ...in my judgement at least.